Cambridge student sets fidget spinner world record

A engineering student has set a world record with a fidget spinner he designed himself.

With the gadget on one finger, James Goh, who is at the University of Cambridge, kept it spinning for 30 minutes and 34.54 seconds, beating the previous record by more than 20 minutes.

Fidget spinners are small, handheld toys with weighted arms which spin when they are flicked. Momentum keeps them turning. They were originally marketed to reduce stress or nervous energy.

"This has been a hobby of mine since I was a kid, so I'm delighted to get the record, although my finger did ache a little bit after holding it in the same position for so long," said Goh, 23.

His fascination with gyroscopes, which also have a rapidly spinning wheel, started when he saw one in the 2010 sci-fi film Inception.

From the age of eight he has been designing spinning tops, which share many of the principles of angular momentum.

Goh, who described himself as "competitive", said there was something "hypnotic" about them.

As part of a university module, Goh used academic papers to inform his experiments and help him figure out a formula for a world record fidget spinner.

It has lightweight, hollow aluminium at its core and tungsten around the edges to store kinetic energy and help it spin for longer.

"It involves a lot of data collection to come up with 3D models, which I then make in the workshop," Goh said.

"Differential equations have helped me a lot to refine the formula, although there is no actual analytical solution, because technically it's unsolvable."

He said he now had his sights set on more Guinness World Records.

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